What To Do, What To Do- Part II

Its been about a week now since the exhilirating news hit that we're stuck with McCain, that is, we're between Iraq and a hard place. It was so sweet to think that payback was coming for all the times he poked his conservative brethen in the eye. Well, you can't always get what you wa-ant, can you Mick? Not only is McCain escaping payback, he's the new Prom King.

I've settled down somewhat from the last post, and while I don't think it's going to be a good day for conservatism anytime soon, I also don't think I'll be casting any votes for a Democrat either. Ann Coulter's calculus leads to a Reductio Ad Absurdum, and so I think we can safely reject the premise as flawed, that is, that it would be a good idea to hasten Armageddon by voting for Clinton or Obama. The thought of one of them throwing away what we've accomplished so far in both Iraq and Afghanistan is absolutely unbearable. I don't think Hilliary would do it as quickly as Obama. Did you see the pics of the Che Guevara flags hanging in Obama's Houston campaign office?

You might as well know that about me since you'll likely be considering me for President in 2020. I may be ideologically conservative, in fact I am slightly to the right of Fred Thompson, but I'm not doctrinaire. I've absorbed the initial impact of what was unthinkable not more than just a few weeks ago, that the Non-straight-talking, Non-conservative, backstabbing, Non-teamplayer McCain will be the nominee. We've taken the rotten apples life sometimes hands you and figured out how to make apple butter. We can do it again. It's still early in the fight, we've taken some body shots, but our knees are holding up and we still might win this on points.

I'm rambling, aren't I?

I had a point to make and its probably this. There will come a point when we can make some sense of all this and gain sufficient perspective to plot a new course. That time is probably months away. There will likely be a lot more that disorients us, but in the long run we'll emerge from the fog and figure out the way to go. We've got to keep trying to keep the forces of disintegration at bay. We've got to fight the good fight on the homefront so the men and women in uniform on the battlefront have someone back here they can be proud of.

Maybe that's not much of a point but its all I've got today. There's hardly any political figures opinion I value more than John Bolton's (he would be my Sec of State if I were the Pres today). Here's the surprising thing he had to say about McCain. Of all the endorsements I've heard so far, this is the one I'm the least cynical about:

"A McCain endorsement worth paying attention to -
Not all political endorsements are created equal. Over the weekend, John McCain received an endorsement that is more equal than most others. It came from John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Bolton stated:

John McCain was very active and supportive during my confirmation hearings to be the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. His belief in me at that time was a testament to his courage to fight the liberals in the Senate and vigorously advance American interests at the UN.

I whole-heartedly endorse John McCain for President because when he takes office in January 2009 he will be prepared immediately to lead us. John will not need on the job training. American conservatives will have a President they can be proud of in John McCain.

Although Bolton's final statement can be debated, there's no doubt that McCain is vastly preferable to Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton on issues of national security, a subject that should be foremost in our thinking. McCain's strong support for Bolton during the latter's extremely contentious confirmation battle should remind conservatives that McCain is a conviction politician, with mostly sound convictions about how to defend this country, not someone out to score points with the liberal MSM. "

[The words between the quote marks are Paul Mirengoff's from Powerline. Bolton's are in italics.]

I regard that as high praise for McCain, indeed. Now I just need to make sense of it all.

Correction

I went to my source, a coffee-table book on The Masters, and found the guy's name. It was Bobby Cruickshank who bet $500 on Bobby Jones to win the Grand Slam of golf in 1930, which at that time consisted of the U.S. Open & Amateur and the British Open & Amateur. He won $60,000 (or so the story goes).

Its important I get this straight because now that Vox Veterana is linking to me, my readership will soon be vast. We certainly don't want to proliferate ignorance, do we?

What To Do, What To Do?

Kudos to Dr. Horsefeathers who called it back on Jan 4. That is, he said then that it would be McCain vs Obama in November. He's got half of the bifecta now. I hope he put some money on it. (Which reminds me of a guy, his name escapes me, who put $500 on Bobby Jones to win the grand slam and won $30,000. That was pretty serious money in 1930).

As I see it, there are 3 options for conservatives.

1) Do an instantaneous turnaround, ala Hugh Hewitt, and take your will captive to the idea that John McCain is actually a pretty great guy to carry the GOP banner in 2008.

2) Take the Michelle Malkin middle ground, which is actually more "grown up" than those in the first option, in my opinion, and work your butt off to support all the true conservatives in the GOP that are still struggling to find a place in our body politic. Her view is that things often happen quickly in politics (e.g. Obama was a nobody in the Illinois state legislature just 4 years ago) and the best thing we can do is find and promote as quickly as possible the next generation of conservative Republicans. I don't know that she says this, but I assume tacit in this position is to cast a vote for McCain in the fall.

3) Then there's Ann.

I love Ann. I never read her without thinking she is far and away, the sharpest knife in the political drawer. Here's what she says-

If Hillary is elected president, we'll have a four-year disaster, with Republicans ferociously opposing her, followed by Republicans zooming back into power, as we did in 1980 and 1994, and 2000. (I also predict more Oval Office incidents with female interns.)

If McCain is elected president, we'll have a four-year disaster, with the Republicans in Congress co-opted by "our" president, followed by 30 years of Democratic rule.

There's your choice, America.

COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER

So, what do I propose?

It seems to me that McCain is not the problem. Nor is Huckabee. The problem is how far the people that have voted for them have fallen, in terms of their political intelligence. How do we account for this?

Since the GOP doesn't send us to indoctrination school, how do we form our opinions? Family, school, media and our own ability to think. If you're lucky enough to have a decent family and the ability to think rationally (in contrast to emotionally) about issues, then the struggle is between family/reason versus academia/media. If you have any hope for changing the dynamics that have brought us McCain and Huckabee, the battle must be fought to neutralize the extent to which we allow the media and the universities (not to mention our pathetic churches) to shape our thoughts.

The blogosphere has made real inroads toward loosening the media's grip on America. Consider the exposure of Dan Rather for the buffoon he is by the 'right' side of the blogosphere. Or the unmasking of the NYT, AP, New Republic, etc. There has been a lot of progress made. Likewise, Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom are waging a good fight to liberate students from the Indoctrinati (hey, did I just make up a word? ...... No, I just googled it and got 9,320 hits. Oh, well-) . I hope and pray these fights pick up steam and warriors.

I don't see any reason to be hopeful that America will wise up anytime soon on the basis of these battlefronts. So how can we expedite the wisening up of America?

I can't escape the conclusion that Ann Coulter is right! If the American people can go thru 9-11 and witness the strategic invasion that occurs daily across our southern border, and still vote for idiots who think "waterboarding" and the fabricated crisis of global warming are bigger deals, then the only hope for them is to give them what they want! We woke up briefly after 9-11, but quickly went back to sleep. We couldn't even bring ourselves to profile Muslim-looking males at airports! Apparently 9-11 was big enough to awaken the Bush Administration (barely) but hardly enough to do the same for the American people.

Sometimes you just give people what they want when they're too stupid to know what's good for them. There are plenty of examples of this in the Bible. The first that comes to mind is the clamoring of the people for a king. God told them he didn't appreciate their dissatisfaction with the covenental arrangement he had with them, and he told them that having a king would bring consequences they were overlooking, but they insisted. So God gave them what they wanted, and everything he told them came to pass.

Look, we've survived as a nation thru some pretty crappy Presidents. We can survive Hillary, or even Obama. We can't survive for long, since we're a democracy, this downward spiral of amnesia and ignorance. I think Ann has crunched the numbers pretty astutely. We've brought ourselves to a place where we've got to pay a short term price for any hope of long term results.

Does that mean I'm pulling the lever for Obama or Clinton? Frankly, I don't think it matters.